German flood report finds political failings

in Berlin

Six weeks after floods devastated southwestern Germany and claimed at least 183 lives, a preliminary report says emergency weather warnings got lost in political buck-passing and decentralised regional structures.

The report in North Rhine-Westphalia noted how the state government declined to declare a state of emergency or set up a central crisis committee to co-ordinate the flood response.

That response – or lack of it – could have far-reaching financial consequences, given the multi-billion insurance claims looming for wrecked homes, business and infrastructure. There could also be a political aftershock given the minister president of North Rhine-Westphalia is Armin Laschet, chancellor hopeful in next month’s federal election.

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State interior minister Herbert Reul said he was in regular contact with Mr Laschet after mid-July meteorological warnings of a record low-pressure system over the state and neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate.

“We were in agreement not to set up a crisis committee,” said Mr Reul, insisting all warnings were passed to regional and local government. A crisis committee, he added, “would not have have saved a single house”, but he conceded that setting it up would have sent a “warning signal to the population, ‘this is serious’”.

His remarks have infuriated people at the opposite end of the chain of command, who insist the forwarded messages were not flagged as urgent by the state government.

In Erftstadt, 20km south of Cologne, local officials say they were concerned by days of torrential rain, but at no time did they realise this would transform the tiny Erft river through their town into a destructive torrent.

“The problem we had is that we didn’t have the issue of fast-moving water on our radar, we had to find that out for ourselves,” said Elmar Wettke, local fire brigade chief. “The town of Erfstadt had no information about what was happening in neighbouring counties.”

By the time he and other local officials recognised the problem, and triggered a local warning, the fire station – like most of the town – was already flooded.

Local man Wolfgang Bieberstein was woken by brown floodwater seeping into his bedroom at 7am on July 15th. His house in Erftstadt-Blessem is now a mud-smeared wreck, and most of his possessions were destroyed

“Normally you’d think they’d give a warning signal, a speaker alert or something, but ... nothing,” he said. “This is the second time: I lost everything after the war and now this.”

The North Rhine-Westphalia flood report paints a disastrous picture of fear of political indecision and blame-shifting. State environment minister Ursula Heinen-Esser told the investigatory committee her officials had received “hydrological status reports”, forecasting extreme water flows in the region due to heavy rainfall.

Those reports were passed on to Mr Laschet’s state chancellery, she said, but his leading official, Nathaniel Liminski, did not pass them on to an expert committee monitoring the situation.

Mr Laschet’s response to the flood – in particular images of him laughing and joking in a flood-wrecked town – have already triggered a dramatic slide in his political popularity. Just over a month before they go to the polls, just 16 per cent of Germans think Mr Laschet has what it takes to be chancellor.

Meanwhile a separate report has blamed climate change for last month’s floods, which claimed at least 220 lives in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The report by 39 scientists for the World Weather Initiative said climate change made the floods between 1.2 and nine times more likely to happen, while it increased the intensity of the event by up to 19 per cent.